Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Literary PortraitsBrandes, Georg
History
Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Literary Portraits
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism
model. It is this personality which artists and poets chisel, paint,
and describe, and for which musicians and poets create. In Grecian
antiquity it was the supple athlete and the eagerly-questioning youth
who was athirst for knowledge; during the Middle Ages it was the knight
and the monk; under Louis XIV the courtier; in the beginning of the
nineteenth century it was Faust. The works which represent such forms
give expression to the intellectual condition of an entire epoch, but
the most important of them express still more; they mirror and embody
at the same time the character of an entire people, of an entire race,
an entire civilization, inasmuch as they reach the most profound, most
elementary stratum of the individual human soul and of society, which
concentrates and represents them in its little world. In this way,
with the aid of a few names, the history of an entire literature could
be written, by simply writing the history of its ideal personalities.
Danish literature, during the first half of the nineteenth century,
is placed, for instance, between the two types, Oehlenschläger's
Aladdin and Frater Taciturnus in Kierkegaard's "Stages in the Path of
Life." The former is its starting-point, the latter its perfection
and conclusion. Now since the worth of these personalities, as before
stated, depends upon how deeply they have their growth in the character
of the people, or in human nature, it will readily be recognized that
such a personality, for instance, as that of Aladdin, in order that
it may be comprehended in its peculiar beauty, must be compared with
the ideal personality which from the beginning of the period beamed
upon us from the fancy of the Danish people. We find this personality
by bringing together a large number of the oldest mythic and heroic
characterizations of the people. If I were to cite a single name, I
would choose that of Uffe the Bashful.[3] In virtues as well as in
faults he is a colossus of a Danish hero. It can readily be perceived
how great a degree of resemblance all of Oehlenschläger's best
characters, his calm Thor, his nonchalant Helge, his indolent Aladdin,
bear to this hero, and it will be seen during the contemplation how
deeply Aladdin is rooted in the character of the people, while at
the same time he is the expression of the ideal of an epoch whose
duration was about fifty years. It could just as easily be rendered
perceptible how Frater Taciturnus is one variety of the Faust type.
Sometimes, therefore, it is possible to show how ideal personalities
extend through the most divers countries and peoples, over an entire
continent, leaving behind them their indelible stamp in a whole group
of literary works which resemble one another as impressions of one and
the same intellectual form, impressions of one and the same gigantic
seal, with wafers of the most varied colors. Thus the personality that
becomes most prominent in Danish literature, as "Johann, the Betrayer"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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